Environment

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain was hit by its biggest earthquake in a decade on Saturday, the British Geological Survey (BGS) said on Saturday, with tremors felt across parts of Wales and southwest England but no notable damage reported. The BGS said the quake was of magnitude 4.4, with an epicenter 20 km (12.5 miles) north

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A prolonged 7.2 magnitude quake that rocked Mexico on Friday left nearly a million homes and businesses without power in the capital and south but the only reported deaths came when a military helicopter crashed after surveying the aftermath. At least 50 homes suffered damage in the southern state of Oaxaca,

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea – Before the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics began on Feb 9, Magnus Strom and his Reuters colleague Sylvain Marchandise, both experienced skiers, spent five days on a frigid mountain, skiing to locations on the alpine skiing course. They laid hundreds of meters of cable a day so Reuters journalists can send pictures and

HOUSTON (Reuters) – A little-noticed addition to the U.S. budget deal approved last week will help Occidental Petroleum Corp and other oil producers by more than tripling a tax credit for injecting carbon dioxide back into the earth to increase crude output. The tax-credit expansion, although supported by environmentalists and energy producers, had failed to

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc will pay a $1.2 million penalty to settle nearly 4,000 alleged violations of U.S. law in a move to prevent harmful exposure to pesticides through illegal sales, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday. Amazon agreed to closely monitor and remove illegal pesticide products from its website in an

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Environmental Protection Agency levied around half the average number of penalties against polluters in the first year of the Trump administration as in the same period of the past three presidential administrations, according to a report released Thursday. The decline was due to staff and budget cuts by U.S. President Donald

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – A growing outbreak of “red tide” has put salmon farms on alert in fish-rich southern Chile, an industry group said on Thursday, though its impact is still far less extensive than in 2016, when a much larger outbreak decimated fish farms. Salmon Chile president Arturo Clement estimated that nearly 3,500 tonnes of

LONDON/YENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) – The Court of Appeal in London ruled on Wednesday that two Nigerian communities cannot pursue Royal Dutch Shell in English courts over oil spills in Nigeria’s Delta region. The split decision upheld a High Court ruling last year that was a setback to attempts to hold British multinationals liable at home

BERLIN (Reuters) – An eye-catching proposal to trial free public transport in some German cities as a means of cutting emissions from dirty private cars is not intended as a substitute for efforts to clean up cars already on the road, a government spokesman said. Under pressure from the European Commission, which is threatening to

LONDON (Reuters) – Energy taxes in major advanced economies are not doing enough to reduce energy use, improve energy efficiency and drive a shift toward low-carbon sources, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said on Wednesday. Taxes on energy use, such as fuel, carbon taxes and excise duties, are used by many governments

MANILA/BEIJING (Reuters) – The Philippines on Wednesday said it would oppose what it said were attempts by Beijing to formally assign Chinese names to undersea features on part of Manila’s continental shelf on its Pacific Ocean coast. Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the issue would be raised with an international ocean mapping agency under the

WELLINGTON/SYDNEY (Reuters) – Fiji has escaped major damage from the Category 4 cyclone that tore through the Pacific Island nation overnight, a government official said on Wednesday, with no major population centers affected. Cyclone Gita brought winds of up to 275 km per hour and heavy rain across Ono-I-Lau and Vatoa, Fiji’s southernmost islands, knocking

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – Fijian authorities were working to establish contact with some remote southern islands on Wednesday after powerful Cyclone Gita took down communications, though the Pacific Island nation’s most populated centers avoided serious damage. Radio NZ reported there were no doctors on the islands of Vatoa and Ono-i-Lau, where the Fiji Meteorological Service had

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – Tonga’s neighbors scrambled to deliver emergency relief on Tuesday after Cyclone Gita tore across the Pacific island nation in the middle of the night, flattening the parliament, tearing roofs off homes and causing widespread flooding. There were no confirmed reports of deaths from the Category 4 storm that bought winds of around

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration’s infrastructure proposal released on Monday would speed up the permitting of U.S. natural gas pipelines, including by cutting Congress out of the process for allowing them to cross national parks. The proposal fits into President Donald Trump’s broader plan to boost U.S. oil and gas development by slashing red

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – Emergency services in Tonga were working to reopen roads on Tuesday and assess what assistance they may need after Cyclone Gita tore across the Pacific island nation in the middle of the night. There were no confirmed reports of deaths from the Category 4 storm, but there were a lot of injured

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday ordered an urgent cleanup of the country’s most famous tourist hotspot, Boracay, calling it a “sewer pool” that he would not hesitate to shut down completely. The firebrand leader said he has given Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu six months to fix up the mess on Boracay

WELLINGTON/SYDNEY (Reuters) – The Pacific nation of Tonga braced for destructive winds and potential flash flooding from Tropical Cyclone Gita on Monday after the powerful storm pummeled Samoa over the weekend. The Category 4 storm was moving south across the Pacific and was expected to hit Tonga’s capital, Nuku‘alofa, by 7 p.m. on Monday (0600

CHICAGO (Reuters) – A winter storm swept across the northern U.S. Midwest on Friday, dumping up to nine inches (23 cm) of snow on Chicago, killing at least two people and snarling hundreds of flights as it rolled east to threaten New York state and New England. Chicago’s metropolitan area was blanketed with its heaviest

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Oil drillers that use a method to store carbon dioxide emissions underground to boost crude production, a technique that coal miners and some environmentalists support, got a boost in the budget agreement President Donald Trump signed on Friday. The deal raised the so-called 45Q tax credit, for storing underground emissions from crude

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit Mexico’s Pacific coast near the major port of Manzanillo on Friday, but no major damage or injures were immediately reported. The U.S. Geological Survey put the epicenter of the quake 31 miles (50 km) southwest of Manzanillo and at a depth of 6.2 miles (10 km).

HUALIEN, Taiwan (Reuters) – Rescue operations in Taiwan started to wind down on Friday after a devastating 6.4-magnitude earthquake rocked the tourist area of Hualien this week, taking a toll of 12 dead and five missing. More than 270 people were injured when Tuesday’s quake hit the eastern coastal city just before midnight, toppling four

MILWAUKEE, Wis./CHICAGO (Reuters) – A significant storm is expected to descend on Chicago, Detroit and Milwaukee Thursday evening and Friday, with heavy snow and freezing temperatures expected to slow travel for millions of commuters. The storm system stretches from western Montana across the Dakotas and parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois, and reaches as far

(Reuters) – The current La Niña weather cycle is likely to transition into more neutral conditions by spring, a U.S. government weather forecaster said on Thursday La Niña is characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean and is linked with floods and droughts. It is the opposite phase of what is

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Audi works council chief Peter Mosch has brushed off the suggestion that Chief Executive Rupert Stadler could leave amid ongoing investigations into the premium carmaker’s role in parent Volkswagen’s (VOWG_p.DE) diesel emissions scandal. “Stadler has a contract. Period,” WirtschaftsWoche magazine on Thursday quoted Mosch as saying in an interview, when asked whether

HUALIEN, Taiwan (Reuters) – Scores of aftershocks hampered rescue efforts on Thursday as emergency personnel combed through collapsed buildings in search of survivors after a powerful earthquake killed at least 10 people near Taiwan’s tourist city of Hualien. The coastal city was hit on Tuesday by a magnitude 6.4 quake just before midnight (11.00 a.m

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Residents in Bangkok, one of the world’s top tourist destinations, were warned on Thursday the city’s air quality had hit dangerous levels just days after the country’s pollution control agency appealed to residents to wear face masks. Air pollution in the Thai capital has come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks with

HUALIEN, Taiwan (Reuters) – Scores of aftershocks hampered rescue efforts on Thursday as emergency personnel combed through collapsed buildings in search of survivors after a powerful earthquake killed at least 10 people near Taiwan’s popular tourist city of Hualien. The coastal city of Hualien was hit by a magnitude 6.4 quake just before midnight (1600

(Reuters) – A $90 billion disaster aid package agreed on by U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday would include nearly $7 billion in aid to storm-battered Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to two Senate Democratic aides and Puerto Rico’s governor. The deal, likely to be voted on in Congress this week, would send $6.8

LONDON (Reuters) – Keepers started counting the animals in London Zoo on Wednesday, in an annual stock take that was delayed by a fire in December. Several animals that arrived in 2017 made their first appearance in the census, including the first Hanuman langur baby born in the facility, 11 Humboldt penguin chicks and a